Lucid Dreamer
by The Quiet Brunette
Summary: A series of dreams prophecizing Mulder's death disturbs Scully. Reluctant to tell her partner and reluctant to believe in her visions, she is forced to when a growing threat against them provokes a move to Iowa.
1. Prologue: Yami

Disclaimer/Author's Notes: I don't own the x files, which I'm sure you're surprised to hear. This is a very happy story(!) and I hope you'll enjoy it and read it all. Next chapter is all the time setting details, but for now we'll stick with Scully's dream. This is how it all started:  
  
It was a dream.  
  
She knew it was a dream, yet it had an aching quality of realism that no mere nightmare should have. When she pressed her fingers against the shutters on the window, they came away dirty. The shutters were as realistically greasy as the fast food Mulder loved so much. Apart from the cloth in her mouth, she was entirely untethered, but previously this had not been the case; she could see frayed and mutilated ropes in the center of the room, and the insistent sting of recent rope burn was torturing her ankles and wrists. This sharp pain was also terrifyingly convincing.  
  
A knock on the door, and she jumped. The loud rap sank in the musty, dark room, then a sweet voice, the voice of her would-be saviour:  
  
"Scully? Dana? Are you in there? Scully?" the familiar voice asked softly, and she wanted to cry, to scream, to tell Mulder in her shaky but barely legible whisper, "Yes, I'm here, and I'm fine, but you have to get out of here right NOW!" But she couldn't, couldn't save Mulder from the fate she'd already dreamt him what seemed like so many times before, because the damned gag was stuck in her mouth, and her panicked mind was just starting to form the irrational thought that if she didn't get it out soon, it was most certainly going to suffocate her. Previously, she suspected, she had been chloroformed, by whoever had tied her up and gagged her, presumably.  
  
Mulder paused outside the door, then moved on. Listening mournfully to his footfalls until they grew too distant to hear, she then gave the walls of the room a miserable, dejected look, focussing her misery on the door. Although she couldn't see from this side, she somehow knew that on the other side were numerous heavy padlocks, and at only around 100 lbs. and with a petite frame of 5'3'', she realised she had very little chance of popping the hinges. She had more chance, she thought unhappily, of popping her arm out of its socket.  
  
Minutes passed, then the end-of-dream signal she had been waiting for passed as well.  
  
Somewhere in the ramshackle building, a door opened and a single round tore the thick silence violently in half.  
  
After what seemed an unfeasibly long amount of time, her own door swung open. She almost fell down the stairs to come face to face in her dream what she begged God every day she would never have to witness in real life.  
  
Fox Mulder, dying in a pool of his own sickeningly bright, sickeningly real blood.  
  
Her mind refused to believe it, to recognise with any conviction what was happening. Instead, she watched with sick fascination as what surely must have been a lot more than eight pints of blood gush out of his side wound. She sat serenely and watched her partner, best friend and lover die, then the weight of the event truly hit home, and she howled, an eerie, desperate sound. Dana Katherine Scully sat in the sundrenched hall of a dilapidated building in the middle of nowhere and howled and howled.  
  
Then she woke up and realised her howls had been silent. Beside her, Mulder grunted, sighed, and rolled over in his sleep. Shaking uncontrollably, she slid out of the bed and sat in the wicker chair facing it. From there, she shook, and watched Fox, perfect and beautiful and incredibly alive as he was, and cried for a solid half-hour. After that she climbed back into bed and continued a troubled but gloriously dreamless sleep.  
  
That was the fifth time she had the dream, and the last time she had it for two months. 


	2. Wedding

Disclaimer/Author's Notes: I still don't own the x files, shock horror. I was originally gonna have the kid from schizogeny getting married, but I eventually chose Lissy because I just like Maine. Plus I got to reference Mulder's pencil sticking antics. The name Lortz is the name of the evil librarian in a King story.  
  
Lucid Dreamer by The Quiet Brunette  
  
CATERGORY: Drama, i guess...  
  
RATING: PG-13  
  
SETTING (TIME): Some time after 'the truth', who knows when.  
  
Scully woke to an empty but still warm bed, and the enticing aroma of fresh bacon coming from the kitchen. Pulling on what looked suspiciously like Mulder's frayed sweater in the haze of sleep still dogging her footsteps, she didn't wake up fully until she had sat down at the kitchen table and had begun to devour her second bacon sandwich. Even then, she had some trouble remembering where she was and what she was doing there. She was definitely in the kitchen of a smallish apartment, but the view through the window was a lot greener than Washington DC had been even fifty years ago. And was that the sea?  
  
"Sleep well?" Mulder asked over the sizzle of the frying meat, his back to her as he reached up to turn over the toast on the grill. He swore as he caught a finger on the hot metal.  
  
"Like a baby," she lied, taking a hurried bite from her breakfast.  
  
His face still hidden from her, he frowned. He knew she'd been up at some point during the night, although he was unaware that she had wept, and he also knew that it had been for more than five minutes. He had no idea why she would lie to him. Trying to dismiss the thought with the dubious hope she would tell him when she was ready to, he turned to look at her and asked whether she was ready for the wedding.  
  
"What wedding?" she asked.  
  
"I don't know," he said seriously. "Some woman called Melissa Turner." He gave her a quizzical glance. "Don't you remember?"  
  
Now she did indeed. The invitation had come in the post, instructing her to bring a friend if she so wished. God alone knew how hard it must have been to acquire the address. Scully would have expected the woman to want to forget the whole evil doll episode, entirely disregard her encounter with Scully, FBI, but psychology was more Mulder's forte than her own anyway.  
  
Interior motives aside, Melissa Turner's wedding was something Scully felt obliged, now invited, to attend, and that was exactly why she and the most paranoid man in North America had blessed Vacationland with a visit.  
  
"Dana? Hellooo? Am I missing something here?" Mulder interrupted, momentarily returning her to the land of the living.  
  
Half a brain, she thought, a smile twisting her lips, but she didn't voice her conclusion. Instead she gave him an innocent, "What?"  
  
"Turner told me you saved her and her daughter's lives on your 'vacation' in Maine." He raised an eyebrow. "I thought it was kinda strange I didn't know about that."  
  
"If my memory is in full working order, and I believe it to be, you were too busy sticking pencils to the ceiling," she chided gently, unable to miss the chance to affectionately mock him.  
  
"You're not laughing at me, are you Scully? Because I'm sure a reputable medical student like yourself wouldn't do such a thing."  
  
"I'm not, Mulder, really. What I'm doing is cleverly yet silently ridiculing you."  
  
"Well, that's very different, isn't it?"  
  
"You bet."  
  
He laughed and kissed her, but when he pulled away he saw she was troubled.  
  
"Fox, don't ever change," she whispered, their faces maybe an inch apart.  
  
"I'll work on it," he whispered back, and he kissed her again. This time she pulled away.  
  
"Is the wedding soon?"  
  
"Not too soon, but I'm driving."  
  
"I'd better get ready then."  
  
As Scully left the table, Mulder watched her and wondered what the lies meant.  
  
Mulder's partner coughed into her handkerchief. Neither of them were crying, although Scully seemed on the verge, but both were smiling. Mulder found himself glancing surreptitiously, now and then, from the bride to the woman beside him, mentally calculating just how good she'd look in that wedding gown. Automatically, each time, he dismissed the image. Marriage just didn't seem imminent. Scully coughed again and looked up at him, smiling sheepishly. She leaned against him, still apparently trying not to cry.  
  
Miss Melissa Turner, soon to be Mrs. Melissa Lortz, stood patiently through her own partner's vows and prepared to recite them herself while Mulder admired the stained glass windows. It wasn't that he was bored, simply distracted. Something was either already wrong or about to go wrong. To him, the air just didn't fall right.  
  
When the gunfire began, he was vaguely surprised, only slightly horrified, and largely delighted that he wasn't going mad after all.  
  
Scully had been dropping off. Mulder's broad shoulder made a more than serviceable cushion, and with the drowsy summer sun that sprayed through the handsome windows plus last night's broken sleep, she wasn't entirely certain she could hold the sandman on the doorstep for very much longer. The gunfire woke her up instantly, and she was on her feet in a second.  
  
"Everyone get down, careful now!" she demanded, instinctively readopting the tone of controlled authority that the vast majority of civilians she had dealt with in her law enforcing past felt it desirable to obey. Mulder got to his feet next to her, and a second shot made the hollow building's walls sing. Thankfully it missed causing another casualty, chewing up the carpet in a spot far too close for reasonable comfort. Scully shook her hair out of her eyes and saw the bullet-wounded man in the pew to her right for the first time.  
  
"Fox, the man..."  
  
"Go do it, I'm fine," he told her briefly, raising a pistol (she realised with dismay that she hadn't even been aware that he was carrying one) at the ceiling. There was no time to worry about the concealed firearm, however; she didn't yet know the severity of the shooting victim's injuries. She scuttled over to the crumpled, almost shrunken human form with little more than a worried glance over her shoulder.  
  
All muscles tensed, Mulder slowly swung the handgun from side to side, gazing up the barrel. He couldn't see the gunman in the rafters, but the two shots had definitely originated above them. Thinking this, he quickly reholstered the gun and left the hall as quietly as he could, in search of the stairs.  
  
The civilians were terrified. Despite Scully's previous command, she had an uncomfortable intuition that they weren't the real targets. The shooter was obviously a woefully incompetent aim, which he proved seconds later by planting a third bullet in the organist's vacated stool and providing a neatly rounded bullet hole. The motives of a potentially insane attacker were currently not her priority, though. She was nursing a fallen civilian, balding, male, Caucasian, and nursing something himself: a hangover. After patiently withstanding five minutes of abuse, she informed him quietly and rather icily that she was a federal agent, and if he didn't shut the hell up, she was going to ensure the appropriate authorities were made aware of his contempt for the law. He made a dark mutter that sounded suspiciously like 'crooked cops', then went to an alcohol-induced state of semi consciousness, leaving Scully in peace to analyze tissue damage.  
  
Mulder pounded up the last of the steps, flung open the door and nearly screamed when Death brushed by a little close for his personal liking and he found himself stumbling on the edge of fifty feet of nothing. Panting, despite being in too good a shape to have been exerted by his uphill marathon, he hugged the wall until he trusted his own legs not to bring on his demise. Emboldened, he sidestepped down the narrow beam, searching fervently for the person that was so blatantly trying to kill him.  
  
The church was pretty big for a town this size in a place like Maine, which the locals probably thought was peachy. Mulder vehemently disagreed. He paused in the corner, looking back and wondering at how far he had managed to shuffle. He was just preparing to continue the epic journey of death defiance on which he had embarked, when the corner of his eye caught a brief flicker of movement. Near nonexistent, but unquestionably there. Slow in his caution and in his fear, Mulder turned to face it fully, and emitted a strangled yelp.  
  
Scully heard the yelp of shock from the floor as she attempted to usher the fifty or so guests out of the emergency doors, having found the main exit locked. She squinted into the shadows above, but could see nothing.  
  
"Mul..." she began, then stopped abruptly as she realised Melissa Turner- still not quite Melissa Lortz- was standing in front of her.  
  
"I'm so sorry about your wedding," she apologized nakedly, blue eyes wide with honesty.  
  
"Oh, ayuh, course you are," Melissa admitted, unable to hide her tears nonetheless, "But I gotta thank you, Miss Scully. Don't know what we all woulda done if you hadn't been here. Thanks to you, and your fella." She gave the rafters her own concerned look.  
  
Scully didn't really want to tell this poor woman that the shooter was probably there because of them, and she had no idea what else she could say to comfort her, so she simply waited for Melissa to leave. Eventually, she did, following the example of her family and friends, and Scully called, "Mulder?"  
  
There was an answering shot.  
  
Standing on the center beam, rifle leveled, was a certain cigarette smoking man. Mulder felt the pumping adrenaline flood his system and fought it for control over his brain.  
  
'How could it be him?' common sense demanded indignantly. 'He's dead, you saw him die!' But he was sure it was him...  
  
Only it wasn't, and he saw that after a few bewildered seconds. It was too late, unfortunately, and he was rattled. Scully's call came at the worst time possible, further distracting him, and the assassin took the opportunity, taking a shot at the vulnerable man. It missed, and Mulder whipped out his pistol to fire the second hollow bullet in this bizarre ballet. The other man, the bad guy, ducked easily and grabbed back onto the pole he'd been keeping balance with.  
  
He missed.  
  
The gunner, sharply suited but average looking, plummeted to his doom, imitating Mulder's flirt with Death and taking it a little too far. He landed a few meters to Scully's right.  
  
Silence fell, and the two remaining living people in the church listened to it.  
  
Then:  
  
"Mulder?"  
  
"Scully?" 


	3. Vacation'

Disclaimer/Author's Notes: Still don't own the Files, (damn you Ebay!) but as far as I know the plot's all mine... No real notes, apart from the fact I chose Iowa pretty randomly...  
  
"Mulder."  
  
Mulder paced restlessly up and down the cramped but homely bedroom, pausing only now and then to gather an armful of assorted shirts, pants, and underwear and push them randomly into the ludicrously oversized suitcase that lay propped open the checked bed sheets.  
  
"Mulder."  
  
He suddenly looked at what he'd done, scowled in frustration, and tipped the fresh suitcase contents onto the bed. Muttering, he retreated to the chair that Scully had the night before, curled into a fetal position, and hid his face in his knees so that all she could see was his furrowed brow.  
  
"Mulder."  
  
Miraculously, this third utterance of his name managed to penetrate his formidable shield of selective hearing. He raised his head and pursed his full lips. "What?"  
  
She tapped the space beside her on the bed that had not been taken up by his pitiful attempt at packing, meaningfully. He got up and sat beside her and gave her a baleful look.  
  
"What are you doing, Mulder?" she asked him gently.  
  
"Packing," he muttered gruffly, trying to turn away, but she forced him to look at her.  
  
"Why, Mulder?"  
  
"Gotta go. Gotta get away from Maine," he insisted. "Go to Iowa, maybe. It'd be far enough and that house... But we have to get away from here, that gunman knew we were in New England! We have to get out of here."  
  
That last phrase was a painful reminder of the dream, and Scully took his hand briefly, as if to convince herself he was still there. "Mulder, how do you know that? You can't prove that the gunman was trying to kill us, especially now he's dead. For all we know, he was just a terrorist. A terrible person, but not a specific threat to us. You don't know that man was an assassin. Let's just go back to Washington or something, but please Mulder, let this go."  
  
He was angry now, and he resented her for making him angry. Sometimes, his temper frightened him, and there was already a twinge of fear adding to the unhappiness, frustration and pure inadequacy he felt. He burst out, almost yelling at her, "Then why the hell did he have a sniper, Scully, answer that, why don't you? If you're so damned clever? The only reason one of us or both of us didn't die today is pure luck! I could have been killed, you could have been killed, and there could be surveillance on us right now! I'm not just being paranoid, goddamn it!"  
  
"Fox..."  
  
"My name is Mulder!" he snapped, correcting her, and regretted it instantly as her face crumpled. She attempted to be emotionless over this unfair treatment, giving him an icy glare that was melted by the hot tears gathering in her eyes. When he saw how upset he had made her, he hated himself for it, the self-disgust he felt shocking him and overshadowing his pointless anger. He understood fully that he was unable to take the sentiment back, so he got up and began to repack in the same haphazard manner as before. After a few moments, she pushed him aside.  
  
"If we really have to go, for God's sake let me pack," she demanded in a choked voice. Mulder slipped out the door before he could succumb to his own emotions, and searched for comfort in the kitchen, which he found in a bag of sunflower seeds. He sat at the table and started to eat. Later, he'd need Scully's comfort and she'd need him, but while they were both still angry, comfort food would do.  
  
Three quarters of an hour later, when both the sunflower seeds and the packing were done, Scully came to him and slipped her arms around him. She asked where they were going.  
  
"Iowa," he told her solemnly, and took her to bed.  
  
She slept longer than he did again, although, of course, neither of them actually did much sleeping in the bed that night, and when she woke he had bought the plane tickets.  
  
They arrived, they settled, and for two months, nothing much happened. 


	4. Dreams

Disclaimer/Author's Notes: Pretty short chapter here, but there is another shorter. This fanfic is definitely going to conclude, because I've already written the end. Another five or so chaps to go. Oh, and I've just realised I don't own the x files, or the Twilight Zone.  
  
The small apartment inhabited by Miss D K Scully and Mr. F W Mulder was modest but still large enough to accommodate both their sets of needs. Already it displayed various personal touches, such as a couple of dog-eared UFO books spread out on the charming living room coffee table, or the compilation CD of classical music sitting upright on the CD player.  
  
Despite these signs of life, Scully remained confident that Iowa would not be their home for very much longer than six months. She solemnly believed that if Mulder chose a place to spend the rest of his life, it would have to have a suitable climate for growing sunflowers, and would have to be at least somewhere near New Mexico.  
  
Mulder shared this unvoiced opinion, but didn't ponder it very much. Instead, he preferred to put his feet up and speculate over the local news, and enjoy a pleasingly greasy burger in the local fast food restaurant.  
  
However, the pair were considerably happy in this alien state, and secure in the knowledge that they had shook off the enemies they had made during their work. The days were bright and warm, and there was plenty of time to lie about and watch TV, if they so wished.  
  
Now it was ominously dark, the middle of the night. The corpse of the finally expired day had long since sunk into the cooling concrete. The seed of the morning, already planted but yet to bloom, germinated silently as the insomniac world waited for it. This, surely, thought those relatively few who were still awake and still in a fit state to philosophize, this must be the true essence of the Twilight Zone.  
  
Dana Scully was not one of those few. She was buried under the illusory safety of her quilt, dreaming the dream again. The horrific violence, amplified this time by the unfamiliarity of the new bed, caused her to toss and turn restlessly as she tried to escape the dream before its conclusion. She failed, but was this time saved the cold isolation of crying alone into the night. With a voice clogged with emotion, but undertoned with delight at having broken through the dream to the real world, Scully screamed, still half asleep, "MULDER!"  
  
She lay awake on her own a moment longer, on her back, naked skin clammy, hair plastered to her skull. She pumped oxygen harshly down her throat, stealing greedily from the crisp, numbing air, and choked carbon dioxide back out. For a few terrible moments she was alone again, then Mulder fought off his own fatigue and reached for her in the dark. She let herself be held and comforted until sure she was not going to cry over what had surely been nothing more than an unpleasant dream. As he played almost absently with her thick red hair, waiting for her to be calm, she drew deep, cleansing breaths, as slowly as she could. An unguessable amount of time passed before she felt she could speak to him, but he spoke before she had a chance to, in a low, soothing voice.  
  
"You had a dream."  
  
She could only look at him, pretty pale eyes staring into his brilliant green, and incline her head slightly, but he evidently understood. It hadn't been much of a question anyway.  
  
"You had a terrible dream, didn't you? A nightmare. And it felt real."  
  
She still couldn't answer, and, afraid of her silence, he said her name quietly. Her first name. She shifted her weight slightly and pressed her cheekbone against his shoulder. He held her more tightly, and Scully was glad of the comforting strength in his arms. Although she didn't cry, she hugged him back, almost desperately.  
  
"Dana, can you tell me about your dream?"  
  
Finally, she found her voice and told him, flatly, emotionlessly. Scully told Mulder about his own blood-soaked demise and he closed his eyes and rested his head on her shoulder. Without opening his eyes or otherwise moving, he said rather hesitantly, "Dana, have you thought that maybe... You've been having precognitions, of some kind?"  
  
She pushed him away so she could look at him, and so he could see her expression. "Mulder, how can you want to believe in your own death?"  
  
"I'm fine, I'm gonna die of autoerotic asphyxiation, not being attacked by some psycho," he joked, but she clearly didn't want him to joke about this. "It's a forewarning," he insisted.  
  
"Even if it was, I couldn't stop the future from happening! Look, Fox, if I was abducted..."  
  
"Abducted?"  
  
"Or kidnapped, OK, I were kidnapped, you'd just come after me anyway! I know you will, because you're just sort of person! In fact... in fact..." She was getting dangerously emotional, but she finished the thought anyway. "I'm lucky to have you."  
  
He shook his head fiercely, and she could see how moved he was by her emotional tribute in the glitter of his eyes. "We deserve each other," he smiled, and kissed her gently.  
  
As daylight at last began to tremble into existence, Mulder and Scully were just re-embarking on the slow descent to sleep, comfortable in each other's arms, and almost peaceful. Almost.  
  
Because although Mulder dreamt a bizarre dream about dancing French fries and elusive, mysteriously sentient candy bars, Scully dreamt of a tall, denim clad stranger. Despite his silence, and the fact he did nothing to cause her alarm, his presence was unsettling and ominous. While Mulder slept through the morning with a smooth brow and the ghost of a smile curling his lips, Scully, in the protective embrace of her contented partner, rested perfectly still, apart from her lips, which were constantly forming and reforming the words 'Who are you?' 


	5. Doctor

Disclaimer/Author's Notes: Well, here it is then. Welcome to... the shortest chapter in this fic! Sorry about the shortness. I've likely taken a few liberties with the details of seasons 6+ from here, but who cares? And I'm sure a number of you are gonna tell me Mulder's eyes are hazel, but I've always been convinced they're green. I don't own the x files, but I do own Harvingham. Now, as you've probably gathered by the title...  
  
Scully went to the doctor.  
  
Dr Harvingham checked her over briefly, unenthusiastically, then kicked back in his chair and put his feet on the desk. This didn't seem professional or even hygienic to Scully, but Mulder barely noticed. He had watched the good doctor throughout the entire appointment and had spotted a strange expression on his face when he had checked something in Scully's records. Mulder intended to make sure the doctor pursued the issue.  
  
Helpfully, the doctor did it on his own. "It says here you're sterile," he puzzled, and Scully nodded, unsmiling.  
  
"For more than seven years now." She chanced a brief glance toward her partner, but he was fixated on Harvingham's unreadable expression.  
  
"Yet you're pregnant."  
  
"I'm what!?" Scully demanded, standing up and staring at her new doctor. "How?" Of course, being a medical professional, she knew perfectly well what pregnancy was and how she might have achieved it, but it wasn't only impossible, it was mind-blowing. To be told she was incapable of conceiving a child and to then conceive two beggared belief. William hadn't been the most conventional of babies, but still...  
  
"Well, I can't say as I know. Yes, it seems impossible, but it's definitely there. I mean, you can have all the tests if you want them, but personally I'd say you were a third of the way through." The doctor's faded brown eyes blinked wearily and with quiet incredulity from behind his reading glasses.  
  
"Three... months? But I'm a doctor, I'd have known..." A small voice in her head told her that that night in Maine before they came here had been three months ago. Her legs felt shaky and she was suddenly horribly aware that she was still standing. She clung to Mulder like a drowning woman, but he all but ignored her.  
  
Mulder leaned forward in his seat and asked in hushed tones how this might have happened.  
  
"I honestly have no idea. I mean, with other cases the slim chance of pregnancy is highly unlikely, but still there, but with Ms Scully here there's absolutely n..."  
  
Mulder cut him off and Scully faintly heard him ask if Harvingham believed in extraterrestrial biological entities. With a harsh laugh that startled all three of them, she said, "Mulder, three months ago I was in a little bed in New England with you, not in a goddamn alien spaceship," caught a glimpse of his eyebrows raising, and passed out.  
  
An unconscious Scully dropped somewhere between Mulder's feet and Harvingham's desk. The elderly doctor peered over the surface.  
  
"She doesn't seem to have taken this well, does she?" he asked Mulder conversationally.  
  
Scully woke up in a warm hospital bed with a plate of bacon in front of her.  
  
"Déjà vu," she observed, unaware she had spoken aloud, and began to eat ravenously.  
  
In the chair opposite, Mulder, elbows on knees and chin resting on steepled fingers, watched her wordlessly until she had finished. When she finally noticed him, he said simply, "It's a girl." The news took a few moments to sink in, and when she figured out what he was talking about, she sighed.  
  
"Thank God, we won't have another Fox Mulder," she quipped.  
  
"Or a Bill Scully," Mulder shot back automatically.  
  
"He is my brother," Scully told him halfheartedly, falling silent before adding, "should we tell them?"  
  
"Your folks, about the baby? Let's make it a surprise," he decided, naturally unaware that the Scullys would find out in much less than six months.  
  
They were both quiet again after that, sometimes striking up short-lived conversation before retaining an aura of silence. Mostly they thought about what was going to happen next and what they were going to have to do about it, but it was really just idle thought compared to their state of mind when what happened next happened. Although they felt at least subconsciously that this was the turning point in their lives, and perhaps it was, but it was certainly not the biggest one. That was yet to come. 


	6. Taken

Disclaimer/Author's Notes: Hi again, fellow X-Files-non-owners. I apologise for my liberal big-word-using, I just grew up reading those words! And the reason there are so many chapters is I originally wrote it longhand and I'm just typing it up now... Don't read too much into the whole DCM thing, he's just symbolic.   
  
The former federal agent was barely visible beneath the crisp hospital bed sheets. All a visitor would have observed was the faint outline of her head, and a tuft of hair spread on the pillow, nothing more.  
  
She was dreaming again, this time not of her abduction and Mulder's subsequent murder, but again of the denim-clad stranger. For some reason, they were sitting around a dinner table in low-backed rotund armchairs and downing large quantities of what certainly tasted like wine, but was inexplicably a rather dour shade of green.  
  
"My dear," said the denim clad man, and she looked up sharply, but despite the obvious fact he was talking to her, he had not bothered to look at her, "your life seems to have taken an unexpected twist." His eyes finally met hers, and she realized that one was green, but the other gray.  
  
She answered guardedly, "Maybe so," not averting her gaze although the effort required to keep steady eye contact was so intense it was almost painful.  
  
"Because, of course, Mr. Mulder's death is imminent."  
  
"It is?" she asked with thinly veiled shock. She supposed she had known that, since the first time she had the lucid dream, but it had taken an utterance from the strange man to really impress the effect. Her fists tightened on the pristine tablecloth, gathering clutches of fabric to her palms. Her guest inclined his head slightly, and she crumpled back into her seat. "But... why?"  
  
He shrugged, expression nonchalant. "He's supposed to. You could probably save him, I guess, but he'd still just die some other way. Could be ten years from now. Or maybe, you've already changed the future by being with child, so instead he'll die in his sleep in ten minutes." Eyebrows raised in mischief, he pulled up one denim sleeve to hold his wristwatch before his nose. The strap of the watch was denim. "Nine minutes."  
  
Unsure how to react to her surreal dream, Scully decided to make the most of it, to try and trawl up answers from her sleeping brain. "Who are you?"  
  
"I am the Alpha and I am the Omega."  
  
"You're God?"  
  
The eyebrows climbed their way up his face again. "No, but I might as well be. I am the angel of death, but a patron of life. I am the bringer of terrors that have been manufactured from joys. I am the Yami, I guess." He smiled a face-cracking smile and spread his arms wide. "I am God of those who have none. I am..."  
  
"A murderer!" Scully spat, pushing back her chair and standing poker straight before him. "You would take a man that has done no wrong, on a whim!? Why? Why not me, or someone else?"  
  
This angel of death in denim sat and stared for so long she began to wonder if, incredibly, he had not heard her. Finally, he stood and grabbed her by the shoulders, his unnaturally strong grip grinding at her bone.  
  
"Because I am Death, and I am beautiful, and Mulder loves me little less than he does you."  
  
She woke marveling at her own imagination, and feeling somewhat thirsty.  
  
Although the more intuitive part of her psyche was restless, the logical Dana felt just dandy. She'd had enough of these dreams, and that one, although odd, wasn't particularly upsetting or threatening. Obviously, the dreams had simply been a product of the new hormones her body had been producing. In fact, she felt better already.  
  
She paused to let her brain settle down, and found the one thought that obstinately remained was her thirst, now earnestly backed up by a vague itch in her throat.  
  
"OK," she thought aloud. "OK, I'm thirsty." Hugging her knees pensively, she tried to recall where she had seen the water cooler. Had she been less bored or more bedridden, she no doubt would have called the nurse. But it was late at night, and besides, she felt perfectly capable to get herself a plastic beaker of chilled water.  
  
She slipped out of bed and winced at the icy touch of frozen linoleum on her bed-warmed feet. Allowing her body to adjust to the shock of the altered temperature, she stood motionless for a few seconds, then set off down the corridor.  
  
When she had turned the corner and the cooler was in sight, the fact that her subconscious was still yammering at her should have concerned her. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it didn't.  
  
Dana took one step, winced at the icy caress of the ground on her skin, and emitted a muffled scream when her face was covered with a tatty cloth. Instead of holding her breath and doing something useful, like struggling free, she took a huge, panicked gulp of tainted air. Unceremoniously, Scully passed out for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.  
  
Author's Notes: Yay, a cliffhanger! Unfortunately, I have no way of telling when I'll get the next few chapters up, but just sit tight! 


	7. Morning

Disclaimer/Author's Notes: I don't own the X Files, and the St Francis of Assisi Hospital, Iowa, is entirely fictional (as far as I know...) In fact, it's named after the church at the bottom of my road. I'm very sorry about the wait - I did warn you, but I didn't realise I'd be *this* long. Holidays/homework conspired against me.  
  
"Hello, Mr. Mulder?"  
  
Fox Mulder tried to answer and was prevented by a sudden wave of dizziness that was his price for getting up so fast. He groped for the coffee table and leaned his weight on it, hearing it groan in protest but uncaring.  
  
The inevitable headache rolled in in amiable waves, and he pressed the other hand to his forehead.  
  
"God-damn!" he moaned, barely managing to keep the receiver sandwiched between his shoulder and cheek.  
  
The man on the end of the phone seemed to have heard that. He asked in a concerned, but understandably wary tone, "Mr. Mulder? Mr. Fox Mulder? Are you there? Who is this?"  
  
Mulder worked his way around the room to the couch, and lay full out on it, head and heels on opposite armrests. He talked in a pained, guttural voice to the telephone. "Yeah, I'm Fox Mulder. Who's this, sorry?" He had an inkling that the old guy had told him his name a few minutes ago, or at least where he was calling from, and the fact that he couldn't remember either frightened him.  
  
"Hello, Mr. Mulder. This is Nick Barrow from St. Francis of Assisi Hospital. Dana Scully is missing, presumed abducted, from the hospital."  
  
The terrible news shook him almost as much as the news of Scully's pregnancy had. Dana - his partner, his soul mate- so beautiful and vivacious in the view of shock news and a fainting spell. God, how he loved that woman.  
  
Remembering the patient caller, he asked in a subdued voice, "Since how long?"  
  
"We don't know. It might've been any time between 12-o clock and 3. The nurse on duty found her bed empty at 3.07 this morning."  
  
Attempting to deal with the revelation, he closed his eyes, finding little comfort in the darkened solace of his own lids. He tipped his head back and forth, as if to shake his brains into working. All he achieved was a searing agony that split his mind in two, and he cried out.  
  
"Mr. Mulder? Are you coming to the hospital? Mr. Mulder?"  
  
"Yeah, gimme a few moments to... get my head together." Dully, he threw the receiver at the base and missed completely. He swore quietly and threw a pillow at the phone. The phone slid off the table, the plug came out of the wall, and the whole thing made an ungodly crash as it hit the floor.  
  
Mulder screamed his frustration, fear, anger and grief to the ceiling, then rolled over and wept. This was so unlike him, he wept harder, racking sobs shaking his whole body.  
  
Scully was gone, and he loved her, and he was afraid for her, angry at those supposed to be caring for her, and wildly depressed by the thought that something so dangerous could happen because of him. After all, everything in her life was now overshadowed by the X Files, which were in themselves a direct result of his stubborn inability to let the past be gone.  
  
Scully. The beautiful, intelligent woman his own deadly character flaw had doomed. She didn't deserve this fate. She was meant for something better. Where was she? What could he do?  
  
"Everything!" he answered himself through tears. He was at least partially recovered now, and he was sat up. Vaguely ashamed of himself for being so weak and selfish, he was still unable to stop silent tears coursing down his face and ignored them at any rate. If anyone could still help Dana Scully, it was him.  
  
'This is what she dreamt,' a nasty voice reminded him, one that evidently originated from his own head. 'You went after her and then you...' He squeezed wet eyes shut, a clamp on his thoughts. Sightlessly, he fumbled for his cell phone and called the two people he knew would at least try to help him.  
  
One of them answered after the second ring. "Doggett," a gravelly voice intoned.  
  
"John, is Monica with you?" Mulder demanded urgently.  
  
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then John Doggett answered cautiously, "Mulder? Fox Mulder? Is that you? Yes, Agent Reyes is here."  
  
"Yeah, it's me Doggett. Listen - and tell Monica too. Dana's gone."  
  
"Dana Scully is gone? What do you mean?" Mulder heard a sharp intake of breath, then a small scuffling sound. The next voice he heard belonged to Monica Reyes.  
  
"Mulder? What's happening, where are you?"  
  
"Scully's been kidnapped from hospital. She's pregnant and we're in Iowa."  
  
Reyes gasped again, and so did Doggett, who had apparently heard.  
  
"Scully's pregnant? But... how? I thought..."  
  
"We don't know," Mulder admitted. "I gotta go." He hung up before they could hold him any longer. Slowly, grimacing, Mulder levered himself off the couch and went to the medicine cabinet, swallowing an aspirin and forsaking the customary drink to wash it down with. Grimly, he closed the hinged door and looked at the mirror on the front. The man staring back at him looked exhausted, but otherwise fine. He wiped his face on his shirtsleeve, shrugged into a jacket and started to jog in the direction of the hospital. 


	8. Ultimatum

Disclaimer/Author's Notes: I don't own the X Files, but hey! This fic is almost finished! Just one more chapter, then the epilogue! If you're still here, thanks for reading!   
  
Scully felt her anger building dangerously, but knew better than to scream and waste precious energy.  
  
Her wrists and ankles were bound together and a gag was stuck in her mouth. The best she could do was to roll, entirely helpless, making dust tracks on the unused floor, and even that took unbelievable effort. Too incensed to weep, she instead lay silent and still, thinking.  
  
Her captor was a large, young man in an unremarkable suit, and was clearly operating under a superior's orders. He wouldn't look at her, but did not seem particularly moralistic. She waited impatiently for him to leave the room, then, with a sickening sense of déjà vu, she began to move her wrists back and forth, already feeling the sting bite of the rope burn.  
  
Then she looked at the sharp, splintered leg of the broken chair that she had inexplicably seen in her dream, and smiled a doomed smile.  
  
He had done it.  
  
He'd put the pieces together, and now he knew where she was. With the information she had unwittingly given him by relaying her dream, he had decided the location of his longtime partner.  
  
The local cops didn't believe him, certainly wouldn't join him on his madman's crusade. Not even when he told them he was an Oxford educated man. He had experienced unease of their kind before; if anything, the mention of his psychology degree only served to unsettle them further.  
  
But now he knew. He knew where to find Dana Scully, and find her he meant to.  
  
He slipped into the rental car, turned the key. It made a satisfying roar that he had no time to enjoy. He pulled out of the cul-de-sac outside the hospital, and turned onto the main road. He drove with little regard for the other people, pedestrians and otherwise, on the highway. A single thought was branded into his brain. He needed to find Scully.  
  
Before something irreversible happened.  
  
She sat back, panting, covered in a light film of perspiration, and stared at her other bindings. Only her wrists were tethered, but they were tethered tight.  
  
She worked herself up to it, then lunged, bringing the rope down over the chair's damaged limb. It splintered further, much more violently, spraying her with tiny bits of wood. An impossibly large splinter embedded itself in her palm, working at the soft skin, and when an unexpectedly strong gush of her own bright blood stained her jeans, she began to feel woozy. But she bit her lip hard enough to draw more blood, because she couldn't stop now, couldn't, and wouldn't let herself until the sharpened point split the rope, and she fell back, cradling her wounded hand.  
  
After a short time, when she felt she could bear the pain, she turned to the door and began to throw herself against it; afraid for Mulder and certain that she could save him if no one else could.  
  
Mulder stopped the car in front of the coniferous-framed old house, afraid for Scully and certain that he could save her if no one else could. He opened the door and stepped out with charming delicacy. Nervously, he reached for his gun and took off the safety, carrying the firearm in front of him. In that way he strode to the front of the house.  
  
He glanced at the pines, with their conspiratorial whispers, and shuddered involuntarily. With that dark image in mind, he aimed a well judged kick at the flimsy door. It made a thin shriek of complaint, but otherwise opened without trouble. With revenge nestling against fear and anger in his brain, Mulder took one step into the darkest room he'd ever seen in his life, and succumbed to his destiny.  
  
The abductor heard Mulder stop outside the house, and got to his feet. He didn't want to have to kill both of them, but it seemed like it was going to be necessary. His job was well paid, and he had no intentions of losing it out of stupid reluctance. He was good at it.   
  
He stood beside the door. When it opened, and a man taller than himself entered, he had momentary doubts, then remembered the gun. He pulled it from its shoulder holster, kicked Mulder's Sig Sauer out of the surprised man's hands, and stood before him.  
  
"Fox Mulder!? FREEZE!"  
  
Fox Mulder did so, standing against the wall when ordered to, sensing there was nothing more he could do. He watched emotionlessly as the criminal slammed the door shut. Then, face pressed against the wall, something snapped, and he yelled, "Who the hell are you!? What have you done with Dana? She never hurt ANYONE, goddamnit!"  
  
Mulder's captor moved closer, and pushed an assault rifle between his shoulders. It was painful enough to make him wince. "I work for some people who want to finish what they started in Maine. They feel the need for shock tactics, but I believe there is a choice to be made here."  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about," Mulder groaned, squirming at the metal jabbing his back. "Let me go, I'm a federal agent!"  
  
"You were," the man coolly reminded him. "I, however, still am. On your knees, and make the choice. Who do you want to die: you, the baby, or Scully and the baby?"  
  
"Oh, God, no!" Mulder murmured. "You can't kill the baby! It's not even born yet! It is completely innocent! What kind of sick, twisted..."  
  
"Fine," the man interrupted. He was getting bored of the charade by now, and he wasn't doing too good a job of hiding it. "That means I'll have to kill you." He dropped the gun, and to Mulder's mixed horror and amazement, produced a switchblade.  
  
"It's easier at closer quarters," he explained.  
  
"No!" Mulder yelled, throwing himself backward, and the rogue agent lunged for him, for the soft, vulnerable organs of his victim.  
  
As Scully sat on the floor, quietly nursing her open wounds and bruises and knowing she'd never get out in time, she heard a single gunshot.  
  
With that shot, she knew Mulder was dead. Mulder was shot, and now he was dying, the only evidence of his existence a crumpled cadaver in the hallway. She wanted to cry, and found she couldn't, so she instead curled into the fetal position, one hand over her eyes as she lay vacantly on her side.  
  
Vaguely, she heard her door open, and knew Mulder's murderer was coming to kill her, too, having no further use for her. Mournfully, she realised that the baby would have to die too, but perhaps that was for the best. With no mother and no father, what life would her child live?  
  
She stood up, helplessly staring at the floor, willing to die and knowing no way of escaping her tragic fate. 


	9. Realisation

Disclaimer/Author's Notes: Two more characters appear, and I don't own them, either. Congrats to John and Monica, though; they do a great job, don't they!? In this chapter, I have shamelessly stolen lines from Stephen King's Firestarter, and Dean Koontz's magnificent From the Corner of His Eye. Thank you for not suing me. The epilogue may or may not follow depending on whether I can find it.  
  
After Mulder's phone call, John Doggett and Monica Reyes were shaken.  
  
"So Scully's... Scully has been kidnapped?" John asked his partner. He was repeating himself, but Reyes chose not to inform him. She slightly inclined her head.  
  
"That's what Mulder said."  
  
"They're in Iowa? Did he say where?"  
  
"I'll get it traced."  
  
Minutes later, FBI Agents Doggett and Reyes drove to Iowa. By some incredible twist of fate, they were currently the field investigators for a small case in southern Minnesota.  
  
In less than an hour, they were outside the house.  
  
The shot was fired, and Reyes made a brief search of the house, finding Scully in one of the upstairs rooms. Her shoulders were hunched, and the hospital gown she was still wearing from the night before hung off them, not touching the front of her body at all. Partially hidden by her hair, her face was ominously blank.  
  
"Dana? Dana, are you OK?" Reyes asked gently. Scully's head tipped upwards to make brief eye contact with the other woman. Then, with absolutely no warning, Scully almost literally fell forward and sobbed tearlessly into Reyes' shoulder.  
  
Monica embraced her acquaintance fiercely, allowing her puzzling emotions to calm. She asked what was wrong, perhaps a stupid question, but one she needed answering. Short silence followed, then Scully broke it with a voice tainted with both grief and hesitant hope.  
  
"Mulder... isn't he... dead?"  
  
"No, I don't think so, he seemed fine," Reyes said with honest bewilderment, holding the redhead at an arms length in order to watch her face. "No, why would you think so?"  
  
A remarkable transformation occurred upon previous FBI agent Dana Katherine Scully's face. The features so recently torn, haunted with turbid, awful tragedy and foreboding lit up, little at a time, with the last and kindest of the fairies from Pandora's Box.  
  
"He's not..." she began. And then, with rapturous delight, "he was WRONG!"  
  
Never had Dana been so pleased at her partner's ignorance as she was now. She ate up the stairs, coming to a doubtful pause as she saw Mulder's motionless form on the sun-soaked floor tiles. Then he turned his head to the side, and she made a small, odd sound of joy, and rushed up to him.  
  
"Fox! Fox! Oh, Fox Mulder, you're alive, you're alive..." she hugged him tightly, mercilessly; and when he groaned in discomfort, she drew back, squatted on her haunches, and demanded to know what was wrong.  
  
"Nothing, it's just..." he rolled over and vomited on the floor, and Scully noted in horror that it was blood, blood he had vomited. She made him roll over again, and sit up, and she found the corrupt agent's legacy - a horrific knife wound in Fox's side. She wept then, and held him again, but did not take her eyes from his face. He could she not appreciate the lively vigor in the eyes that returned her loving gaze?  
  
"Scully, I'm gonna die, aren't I?" Mulder asked her gently, but with strength unprecedented in a dying man.  
  
"No, of course not," she told him, but they both knew the truth, and it frightened them more than any government conspiracy. "No," she repeated, but it was not heartfelt.  
  
Urgently, he took her hand and they both cried a little, ignoring the frozen duo of Doggett and Reyes in the corner. Eventually, he said in a voice so near to a whisper she had to crouch closer to hear him say, "the pines... the pines outside. Were they pines?" A shadow of doubt passed over his features, and she squeezed his hand convulsively, and he smiled in relief. "Yeah, they were... stupid trees. Don't even know the difference between summer and winter. But anyway..." he belatedly returned her squeeze, and gave her a heartbreakingly tender smile. "They don't matter, do they? I've died... to save two great people. And thank you John, and thank you Monica, and say thank you to the big bald beautiful man for me too. But if I have any regrets, screw it. I've eaten enough sunflower seeds for whatever higher power there may or may not be to look kindly upon me, huh? So I have to say that I love you, Dana. I've... done what I can to prove that to you, and I hope you realize it, but..."  
  
"Ssh," she murmured, pressing a finger to his lips, and he obeyed. "I love you too, Fox." Then she bent forward further, hand tightening on his, and kissed him for the last time, tasting the doom ridden blood in his mouth and uncaring, furiously blinking back the tears that inevitably came, as she needed to keep his precious face until the moment she could never have it again. They lay like that, a tableau, with the embarrassed bystanders barely able to comprehend the emotions they were witnessing, until Mulder finally lay limp in her arms, and his hand fell from hers. Even after his heart stopped, she held his body close to hers, her gorgeous red hair dramatically over his shoulder, golden in the sun and creating a contrast against his dark brown that was nothing short of beautiful.  
  
Finally, Scully felt a hand on her shoulder and drew reluctantly back from the inanimate form of the man she had loved so much. She continued to weep silently, each tear for the pains and trials she had suffered in the past few months, and this concluding, terrible pain. As she watched him, suddenly, miraculously, he blinked and turned his head towards her, but his eyes didn't focus.  
  
Still, he seemed to be talking directly to her when he said, "Your father's proud of you, Dana."  
  
Then he clinically died for the second time that day, this time forever, and his words broke down a dam in her heart, and she fell to the floor and wept like she'd never done before and never would again.  
  
She didn't get up the next minute, or even the next hour, but when she did she didn't cry about Mulder's death, or anything else that had happened in the past, again. 


End file.
